The arms race is not over, said Russian President Vladimir Putin in announcing his country's intention to strengthen Russia's military might.
Putin said in nationally televised address to the Russian Parliament that Russia intends to begin building new generations of nuclear weapons, anti-missile weapons as he bolsters his nation's conventional military forces.
In a combative response to criticism of his increasingly repressive domestic and foreign policies, Putin pledged to boost his country's military power in an effort to counter pressure from abroad, explaining that over the next five years, Russia will "substantially increase the provision of strategic nuclear forces with modern long-range planes, submarines and launchers. Along with the means of overcoming the systems of anti-missile defense, which we already have, new types of weapons enable us to preserve what is undoubtedly one of the most important guarantees of lasting peace -- namely, the strategic balance of forces."
"It is premature to speak of the end of the arms race. It is in reality rising to a new technological level," he said.
"We need a military that is able simultaneously to carry on battle in global, regional and, if need be, several local conflicts," he said.
He revealed that Russia is developing "unique high-precision weapons" and missiles "whose trajectory is unpredictable for the potential enemy."
The Russian president had harsh words for the United States, comparing America to a wolf -- the traditional villain in Russian folklore, saying: "Comrade wolf knows whom to eat, he eats without listening and he's clearly not going to listen to anyone."
Putin vowed to strengthen the nation's nuclear deterrent as well as conventional military forces without repeating the mistakes of the Cold War era, when a costly arms race against the United States drained Soviet resources and led to a breakup of a near-bankrupt Soviet Union.
"We should not burn money uselessly," he advised. "Our responses should be based on intellectual superiority. They will be asymmetric, less costly, but they will undoubtedly make our nuclear triad [ground, naval and air] more reliable and effective."
Noting that the United States spends nearly 25 times more on its military than Russia, he said "This is what is described in the defense sphere as 'Their home is their fortress,' " he said. "Well done, guys," he added.
"But this means that we should also build our own home to be strong and reliable, because we can see what is happening worldwide," he added.
"We have slipped toward Cold War rhetoric quite a while ago, and such passages in Putin's speech are nothing new in that sense," Georgy Satarov, president of a Moscow think tank, told the Los Angeles Times.
In a statement released to the media, Grigory A. Yavlinsky, head of Russia's Yabloko party, issued a statement: "The foreign policy set out in the address is a policy of a besieged fortress, mistrust of partners and the feeling of superiority over neighbors. There is still no answer to the question as to what Russia will be like, where it is going and with whom."
A more belligerent Leonid D. Ivashov, a former Russian Defense Ministry official told the Times that he believes the Cold War never really ended, and was merely transformed into geopolitical rivalry.
"For a long time Russia didn't pursue an independent economic policy, nor did it pursue an independent policy on defense and security," Ivashov said. "By way of one-sided concessions, we were just giving up our positions one after another.
President Putin made it clear today that this trend is over."
